Trivial pursuits

If you’ve been reading Minnesota Transplant long enough, you know that some days I really don’t have anything to say.

But I write a post anyway.

Today is one of those days.

I write for practice. I’ve come up with something interesting or inane to say about 26 times a month on average over the past five years. (I don’t obsess with my stats much, no, though astute readers might have noticed I recently surpassed 1,000 followers. If you’re reading me on your iPad, that is. On my PC, I supposedly have 643 followers. Who can account for the vagaries of WordPress stat crunchers? Who pays attention to such minutia anyway?)

In any case, today was one of those rare days in May. I ran 3.53 miles this morning (again, who’s counting?) as the glorious sun was rising. Not too hot, not too cold, it was Goldilocks “just right.” When I walked the dog briefly this evening, it was “just right” again.

Today’s meals? Not worth mentioning, except to say pesto mayo is awesome on a bacon-and-egg sandwiches.

Didn’t do anything worth writing home about either, except one thing: I wrote 877 words on my work-in-progress. Click here for today’s taste of the memories of the year I turned 15.

That’s about it. Oh, I slept well last night, too. Hoping for the same tonight. Here’s wishing you sweet dreams.

The seamy side of the suburbia’s American dream: Spring cleaning

“I think the message to, uh, psychos, fanatics, murderers, nutcases all over the world is, uh, ‘do not mess with suburbanites.’ Because, uh, frankly we’re just not gonna take it any more. Ya know, we’re not gonna be content to look after our lawns and wax our cars, paint our houses. We’re out to get them, Don, we are out to get them.”

~ Art Wiengartner in “The ‘Burbs”

The suburbs of the American Midwest have a culture all their own, usually involving the worship of All Things Big: Walmart, SUVs, economy-sized ketchup and long commutes.

We live in oversize cardboard houses with distinctive design features like three-car garages and mailboxes acquired at Home Depot. We weed-and-feed the grass to make it grow and then we mow it down. The houses are close enough together that we can look into each other’s windows, but unless someone is playing Judas Priest at top volume, we can pull the shades and pretend we have the privacy of a Greek island.

We suburbanites in the Midwest have been holed up since Christmas, grinding out the snow and cold of the Winter That Will Never End (well, some of us have been holed up since Christmas; some of us have been cowering in the natural-gas-heated corner since returning from South Padre Island on March 1).

Today, spring arrived. Sunshine reigned, the air was warm enough to wear shorts and the wind was pleasantly breezy instead of oppressively monsoon-like.

Suburbanites all over my neighborhood practiced a tradition as old as the municipal sewer system: Spring yard work. The American dream of home ownership comes with the nightmare of constant housekeeping, indoors and out.

Sure, some folks took advantage of the nice weather today by going for a bike ride or watching an outdoor baseball game, maybe visiting an ice cream store. But if you own a home with 3.5 bathrooms and no-maintenance vinyl siding, you  spent the day attending to your abode.

The back yard, in all its spring cleaning glory.

We stained the deck.

And power washed the patio furniture that’s been stored all winter in the utility shed.

And changed the oil in the lawnmower.

OK, I didn’t do any of those things. My Beloved did. But I did help. Mostly, I was errand girl (“get this,” “bring me that,” “put this away”). But I also stained the tops of the fence posts (no, I don’t know what difference it makes either, but I’m married to a Virgo — I don’t ask questions). I’m guessing my neighbors wondered who was the lady wearing shorts and cursing the 40-foot-wide blue plastic tarp as she attempted to fold it for storage.

Despite being a suburbanite, I generally avoid yard work. The neighbors like my friendly talkative husband and speculate about his mystery wife who is rarely seen and only heard from when she’s yelling at the dog to quit barking in the back yard.

“I’ve been watching that house ever since they moved in. No one goes in. No one comes out.
No visitors. No deliveries.
What do you think they’re eatin’, Ray?”

~ Art Wiengartner in “The ‘Burbs”

For other pictures that capture culture around the world, check out this week’s WordPress photo challenge.

Stuff happens

It’s been a weird day, and while I’d like to be eloquent, I’m not sure I have the energy.

Like the rest of the sane citizenry of this earth, I’m shocked by the bombing in Boston yesterday, but as a recreational jogger, I’m really confused: Why would anyone target runners? Runners bug no one except an occasional territorial dog and drivers who can’t share country back roads.

I’m grasping for answers to “Why?” but there are no rational answers for irrational acts.

Other weird stuff is going down in the business world — more crazy machinations over which I have almost no control. I’m feeling really bad for people being treated like commodities.

Closer to home, I’m feeling overwhelmed.

Control freaks don’t like feeling out of control.

I think I need to exert my power over a small thing I can control: I think I’ll clean out my purse. Those receipts won’t know what hit them.

Survey says …!

Market research about newspaper and magazine readership? Count me in!

When Lurita from the American Institute of Consumer Studies showed up at my front door today, I welcomed her in so I could register my opinion about one of favorite pastimes: Reading.

But guess who she wanted to talk to — my Beloved, the man who’s banned all paper media from our house.

Hrrmph.

He answered all kinds of questions about all kinds of media (not just magazines and not only print) while I listened in. I remembered helping conduct a political survey in one of my poli sci classes a couple decades ago (getting hung up on is no fun). It was interesting to think about how this information, part of a national random sample, will be used. Lurita was fun, too — much better to be interviewed in person than on the phone.

Lurita said she was visiting some of my neighbors — apparently, our media consumption habits are representative of suburbanites across the country. I hope my reading neighbors welcome Lurita’s questions.

She’s got mad skillz

“You know about fixing cars, you’re athletic, and you know when to shut up.”

“That last one isn’t a skill.”

“Trust me. It’s a skill.”

~ Simone Elkeles in “Rules of Attraction”

Driving a stick is like riding a bike: You never forget.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I had to drive Adored Stepson’s car halfway into the city today. He’s got a car with more power than I would ever want to use. And six speeds.

I haven’t used a manual transmission in more than a decade, but I managed to avoid killing it or grinding the gears (much — just kidding, Caswell!), so I guess I proved an old lady can drive a high performance vehicle like an old lady.

I got it back home in one piece. Though I wished I had worn ear plugs. Apparently, old ladies don’t like impressively noisy exhaust systems as much as 18-year-olds.

Here I am at the end of a tunnel, where there is light

Those who wait endlessly for news about a lost person do not do so in vain if they find hope and optimism in their struggle.

~ Pauline Boss

Among those books I’m letting go to the donation bin is a helpful little book called, “Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live With Unresolved Grief” by Pauline Boss.

I picked it up three years ago when my Adored teenage stepson Caswell moved out of our house to live with his mother two states away. His absence broke my heart, and just finding a label for it — “ambiguous loss” — helped me cope a little. It took months to put the pieces back together, but eventually, the relationship with my Adored stepson improved, and our lives — separated though they were by two states — came to feel like a new normal.

Boss’s book offered some nuggets of advice, and as with many other losses, time helped, too. Sometimes one just has to persevere through hard times.

Now, my Adored is soon graduating from high school and talking about moving back to our house. Some parents of 18-year-olds might not like such news, but this turn of events thrills me. Caswell is here this week, spending his spring break with us. We restarted the jets in the hot tub three times tonight before we finished our deep conversation about relationships and the future. He takes after his father, my Beloved, and I find him interesting and pleasant to spend time with him.

Which teaches me all over again that life changes. Bad days happen. Bad times get better. Happy days are here again. Savor good times because they come to an end.

Boss’s book was necessary for a season in my life, but I can let it go now to help someone else.

“As long as there is optimism and hope, continuing to work on a relationship with someone who is slowly dying can be a kind of victory, as can continuing to work on … letting kids come back home after they leave, knowing they will leave again. … If we do it with optimism, there is no absurdity in perseverance.”

~ Pauline Boss

Rearranging the deck chairs

Creativity comes in many forms.

I like to think I’m creative, but I admire those people who move a room around just for fun and come up with great new ways to make a conversation area.

I’m not one of those people.

Living room configuration No. 1

Our living room has only two layouts:

1. Couch horizontal to the TV/fireplace.
2. Couch perpendicular to the TV/fireplace.

After a year in configuration No. 1, I moved the living room around today to configuration No. 2.

Living room configuration No. 2

Stellar innovation, I know. But it reminds me of a few of my rules to live by. These are a few of the bits of wisdom that I would file in the “This is most certainly true” file (see Wednesday’s post for that musing):

1. Breakfast is not complete without fruit.
2. Never wear navy with black.
3. The best sex arises from love, not power (“Fifty Shades of Grey” did the world a great disservice on this point).
4. Nothing good happens after midnight (unless you’re observing No. 3).

And No. 5: At least one piece of furniture in a room should float. If one shoves everything against the wall, your room tends to look like your first apartment: Decorated by an amateur.

With that in mind, the sofa in configuration No. 2 is not shoved up against the windows; a sofa table behind it cushions it from the windows.

That’s my creative contribution to the world today.

You’re welcome.

Sifting through the flakes

Snow means different things to different people.

You’ve probably heard the saying that Eskimos have a thousand words for snow; if you Google it, you’ll discover there’s some controversy to this old trope, but even among us Midwesterners, there’s plenty of meaning in those falling white flakes.

“Snowstorm” means school’s out for some of us. It might mean outdoor fun, cocoa or a snowball fight.

“Accumulation” could mean cardio (or heart attack if you’re wielding a shovel and love handles), work (it’s still work, even if you have a snowblower) or money (if you’re a snow plower).

“Snow” means cold temperatures, long winter and misery for some of us. I don’t know if living in Minnesota for nearly four decades inspired these feelings in me or if simply one season of repeated visits from Jack Frost would have done it, but I’m squarely in the club of snow haters.

And in the corner opposite of merry diversion, “falling snow” means four-wheel drive, slippery roads and white-out conditions for people who have to drive in a wintry environment. I can’t escape applying some ominous meaning, however irrational or unconscious, to every significant snowfall since my brother died in a winter weather-related car accident.

Attitude is everything, as it is said, so this March 5th morning, I engaged with the latest deluge of white stuff. Having escaped 17-odd inches of it while in Texas the past two months, I bundled up and enlisted a mindful approach: No judgment, simply observation. Rather than a “bah, humbug” frame of mind, I brandished a camera.

Except for a few passing vehicles, I encountered only two beings at 7 a.m.: A barking dog (I’d be ill-tempered, too, if I had to pee outside in bare feet when it was 30 degrees) and this intrepid soul:

“Ooh-whee, bring it on.”

Just call me Wonder Woman

In the past 24 hours, I have both killed an intruder in my abode and broken into it.

The intruder was a cockroach. A mighty big one. In fact, if I hadn’t killed it when I found it in the sink at 11 p.m., it might have devoured both me and my Beloved for breakfast. That big.

Its destruction required a pot scrubber, a paper towel and a garbage disposal. That’s the only way to be sure.

And then, just as I was preparing for a nice morning of solitude with only a cup of coffee and National Public Radio for company, I returned home from my morning dog walk to find I had locked myself out. Or someone had locked me out. Depending on who you blame for locking the door as he was leaving early this a.m.

After only a few minutes of huffing and puffing, I determined I could climb in through the window above the kitchen sink. Which I did. Without breaking anything.

After my domestic heroics, I’m not sure I feel a lot safer in my living space, but I certainly feel entitled to a pair of bullet-proof golden bracelets and an invisible jet.

Confessions from the bottom of the peanut butter jar

From where this predilection springs, I don’t know.

I didn’t grow up in the Great Depression.

I’ve never been denied peanut butter.

It’s not equivalent in value to spun gold.

In fact, my peanut butter ownership probably borders on obscene gluttony. It is rare to find fewer than two jars of peanut butter in my cupboard, one creamy Jif, one crunchy Skippy.

Peanut butter jar, properly scraped

So why this compulsion to scrape every last spoonful from the bottom of the jar?

I am similarly compelled to squeeze every last bit of salad dressing from the bottle, to add water to my shampoo so I can use it until my conditioner runs out, to screw the top off my facial moisturizer pump so as to extract its last drops of wrinkle eraser.

Perhaps the label of “wasteful” strikes my Midwestern soul as too near to a deadly sin. But interestingly, I am not alone.

After typing in “scraping the bottom of the peanut butter jar,” Google reveals there’s a group on Facebook dedicated to just such a subject: “Scraping the bottom of the peanut butter jar to get the very last of it.”

Apparently there’s a Facebook group for just about every strange predeliction and obsession.

The group’s mission? “Sometimes you just have to get it ALL out before you can call it empty.”